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Researchers at DCU are working on a €4.6million EU-funded project called RECAP to develop the next generation of optimised cloud computing systems to support the Internet of Everything. The project will pave the way for a radically novel concept in the provision of cloud services.

The cloud is a key enabling technology for connected people, devices and computers. Over 13 billion devices are connected to the internet and whilst the cloud supports this connectivity at hyperscale, it is slowly reaching the end of its capacity.

Modern network structures currently place data centre resources and servers closer to the end user to overcome the growing latency and delays arising from the growing usage. Despite advances in technologies, most services and resources are still provided in a best-effort fashion and quality of service guarantees cannot be controlled. These practices are perceived to be a major barrier in the rapidly emerging Internet of Everything and the wider networked society.

RECAP will develop the next generation of cloud, edge and fog computing capacity provisioning via targeted research advances in cloud infrastructure optimisation, simulation and automation. It will look at how we design and manage new infrastructures and service provisioning models. It will incorporate a much more elastic model, which delivers services and allocates resources in a dynamic manner, tied to time-varying user requirements. This will ensure that communication critical applications will always achieve their goals without unnecessary delays, no matter where they are located.

“Ireland plays an important role in the provisioning of cloud services through the various multinationals that host in or base their data centres in Ireland. As our conceptualization of the cloud and the benefits that the Internet of Everything will bring evolves, new technologies are needed to support the quality of service that enterprises and consumers expect. RECAP is at the forefront of research in this area and will make a valuable contribution to the next generation of the cloud.”

RECAP was selected for funding by the European Commission's research and innovation programme, Horizon2020. The consortium comprises nine research partners from five European countries – Ulm University (Germany), Umea University (Sweden), Tieto (Sweden), IMDEA Networks (Spain), SATEC (Spain), Linknovate (Spain), DCU (Ireland), Intel (Ireland) and BT PLC (UK). The IC4@DCU research team leads the simulation-related work and coordinates dissemination and exploitation efforts in the project. The project will run until January 2020 and will solve known constraints and offer genuine commercial benefits to the consortium partners and other European adopters of the RECAP output.